This month, we brought together our first two Reimagining RSE Trailblazer groups — one of school-based educators, and another of RSE providers and practitioners from outside organisations. These meetings marked the beginning of a collaborative process to shape new tools, frameworks and approaches that make RSE more responsive, reflective, dialogic and youth-led.
Below, we outline some of our key take-aways from the meetings. You can find a summary of the themes from the meetings here:
Exploring ‘safe uncertainty’
At the center of our discussions was the idea of safe uncertainty: a framework that encourages us to hold space for discomfort, ambiguity and complexity, rather than reaching for binary framings or black-and-white thinking that over-simplifies nuanced situations and contexts.
The safe uncertainty approach resonated powerfully with attendees but also raised an important tension: it’s not only staff who can get stuck in safe certainty, young people can too. When asked to reflect on difficult RSE topics, students often draw on the frameworks they’ve been given: legality, right and wrong, red flags and green flags. These aren’t unhelpful, but they can shut down the kind of nuanced, values-based and dialogic conversations that RSE really needs.
Some educators may welcome this — it feels safer. But as several of our practitioner attendees pointed out, we can’t take these surface responses at face value. This serves no-one because it does not provide young people with the critical skills to navigate a complex and messy world. People’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours can be – or seem – illogical and relationships are not straight forward. It’s up to us to make space for uncertainty, to scaffold it and to invite young people to think laterally, creatively and critically about the world around them.
Why does this happen?
It’s important to ask why this tendency toward certainty exists. Young people are schooled in ‘correct answers’ from an early age. Many have only ever encountered RSE as a risk-management exercise. In that context, legalistic and binary thinking isn’t surprising — it’s what they’ve been taught.
Interestingly, some attendees noted that younger children are often more open to uncertainty. Earlier in their schooling, many still carry a child-like curiosity and capacity for questioning, which we condition out of them. The task becomes how to nurture that openness as they grow — not to close it down with rigid answers, but to help them build uncertainty tolerance and explore what safe, ethical and relational decision-making can really look like.
Making space for diverse perspectives
One of the most significant challenges raised in our trailblazer groups was how to surface and engage with diverse viewpoints in the classroom, especially on sensitive or contested topics. In a context where time is limited and RSE often has to compete with other priorities, educators can feel a strong pressure to keep things ‘safe’ and controlled.
But this can lead to risk aversion — a reluctance to open up discussions that might be complex or controversial, especially if there isn’t enough time to explore them in depth. Several attendees spoke about their concerns around student takeaways: if a topic is opened up but not adequately unpacked, what might learners absorb or (mis)understand?
This points to a core tension: how do we model open, reflective inquiry while also ensuring safety, clarity and care? It’s not an easy balance, and it requires support, confidence, and time, all of which are often in short supply. It also points to the need of a ‘whole-school approach’, where these conversations are not isolated to an hour or, worse, odd tutor time once a week, but are instead reflected in practice as part of the school’s culture.
Self-disclosure and the question of ‘sexual projects’
A particularly rich conversation emerged in our educator group around the idea of ‘sexual projects’, a term that helps us acknowledge the different perspectives, experiences and values that both students and staff bring to RSE. These projects are shaped by identity, upbringing, faith, politics and personal history. Recognising them can help educators avoid either imposing their views or retreating into neutral vagueness.
This raised the question of self-disclosure: when and how should educators share their own experiences or identities? On the one hand, thoughtful self-disclosure can be a powerful pedagogical tool — modelling openness, introducing new perspectives and fostering trust. On the other, it can backfire: being too didactic or personal risks undermining inclusivity or alienating students. Some educators fear backlash or professional consequences; others may unintentionally moralise or seek affirmation.
From our perspective, we are firm believers in the power of storytelling as a pedagogical method, to build empathy and build connection. However, as part of our ground rules, we make it clear that we are here to engage in discussion – not to ‘sell’ you anything. We welcome push back and challenge and will share openly with young people how our discussions with them and other young people have influenced and changed our own perspectives.
What emerges is a clear need for careful reflection:
Why am I disclosing this? What is it meant to do?
Is it opening space for critical thinking — or closing it down?
This is another area where safe uncertainty becomes essential: helping educators sit with complexity, exercise judgment and act with both confidence and care.
Safe and supported
Of course, safe uncertainty must also be safe. That means we need to equip educators with the confidence, tools and support to hold complex conversations. It means asking what makes this work possible: leadership, a supportive environment, time, and clarity of purpose.
But we know that time and resourcing are in short supply. That’s why we’re working with our trailblazers to develop diverse formats for training and engagement — from in-person CPD to blogs, podcasts, short video explainers and a digital self-assessment tool that will help individuals and teams locate their starting points and shape their learning journeys.
Building a movement
We’re also laying the groundwork for a members’ area on our website — a space for sharing ideas, practice and peer support. And we’re thinking strategically about who else needs to be in this conversation. We started with the passionate and committed, but we know that for meaningful change to happen, we need to engage SLT, governors, regulators and policymakers too.
A call to action
Our trailblazers are helping us surface the issues, identify the opportunities and shape a new way forward. But this work is bigger than any one group.
Whether you’re an educator, practitioner, policymaker, regulator, parent, campaigner, or advocate — at local or national level — we invite you to join us. Help us reimagine what RSE can be: more honest, more dialogic and more relevant to the lives of the young people we work with.
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Learn more: https://re-imagining-rse.org
Let’s build this together.
To find out more about safe uncertainty, please check out our quick explainer document: